METROPOLITAN EDISON COMPANY - Pennsylvania Public Utility ...

XII. DIVERSITY & EEOBackground – The Stratified Management and Operations Audit of Metropolitan EdisonCompany (Met-Ed), Pennsylvania Electric Company (Penelec), and PennsylvaniaPower Company (Penn Power) (collectively referred to as the FirstEnergy PennsylvaniaCompanies or FE-PA Companies), conducted by the consulting firmBarrington-Wellesley Group, Inc. (BWG), released by the Pennsylvania Public UtilityCommission (PUC or Commission) on March 1, 2007, at D-05MGT002, D-05MGT003and D-05MGT004, contained two recommendations in the Diversity and EqualEmployment Opportunity chapter. BWG rated this functional area as needing minorimprovement. In this chapter, two prior recommendations and prior situations arereviewed and two follow-up findings and two recommendations are presented.Prior Recommendation – Identify the employment areas that are below parity anddevelop feasible approaches for making the FE-PA Companies’ employee mix matchthat of the respective service territory.Prior Situation – BWG found that opportunities existed to increase utilization ofminorities and females throughout FirstEnergy’s workforce. An analysis of 2005employment data showed that only Met-Ed came close to employing a representativeportion of the relevant population. The goal for all three FE-PA Companies was to havetheir workforce closely mirror the communities that they serve; however, BWG did notsee any significant effort, beyond that which would normally be expected, to increasethe percentage of minority and female employees at any of the FE-PA Companies.Moreover, BWG stated that it did not find any concrete evidence that there was anyinternal recognition or rewards to individual managers for meeting diversity goals.Follow-up Finding and Conclusion No. XII-1 – Met-Ed’s, Penelec’s, and PennPower’s workforces do not have proportional representation of women and minorities inseveral job categories.Exhibits XII-1, XII-2 and XII-3 show the underutilization of women and minoritiesat Met-Ed, Penelec and Penn Power, respectively for 2009, which was the most recentdata available at the time of the Audit Staff’s field work. Underutilization results whenthe percentage of women and minorities employed in a particular job group is less thanwould be reasonably expected given their availability within the applicable labor market.Although the Company has expressed a commitment to utilize a diverse workforce andhas programs in place, underutilization is still occurring. There are four methods thatcan be used to determine if underutilization is occurring in a given job group:1. The "any difference" rule (underutilization exists if there is any differencebetween the availability of women or minorities, compared to their percentages inthe employer's actual workforce).2. The "one person" rule (underutilization exists if the difference between availabilityand actual employment equals one person or more).- 86 -